Production ceased in 1968 after the BMC merger into British Leyland placed it under the same corporate umbrella as Land Rover
Showing posts with label British. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Thanks to Jerry, for sharing this 1958 Austin Gypsy! I've never seen or heard of one until now!
Monday, October 12, 2026
A floating World War Two roadway of the type used during the D-Day landings as a portable harbor wall, to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, has been unveiled following preservation works,
Associated British Ports (ABP) used cranes to lift the structure, known as a whale, from Town Quay in Southampton last year after it had spent decades partially submerged.
The unveiling of a plaque at its new home outside Solent Gateway at Marchwood, Hampshire, was carried out by the Lord-Lieutenant for the county, Nigel Atkinson, with the local MP, local council leaders and veterans in attendance.
Mulberry Harbours, as they were known, were built in the UK and used overseas to help transfer Allied troops and equipment as they began the liberation of France.
Port director Richard Parkinson said: "The Mulberry Harbour was a brilliant piece of British engineering in the Second World War to create the harbour that enabled Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings.
"It was absolutely a battle-winning, innovative British engineering invention."
The whale is one of only two known surviving examples in England that are not submerged.
The Mulberry harbours solved the problem of needing deepwater jetties and a harbour to provide the invasion force with the necessary reinforcements and supplies, and were to be used until major French ports could be captured and brought back into use after repair of the inevitable sabotage by German defenders. Composed of floating but sinkable breakwaters, floating pontoons, piers and floating roadways, this innovative and technically difficult system was being used for the first time.
The Mulberry B harbour at Gold Beach was used for ten months after D-Day, while over two million men, four million tons of supplies and half a million vehicles were landed before it was fully decommissioned. The partially completed Mulberry A harbour at Omaha Beach was damaged on 19 June by a violent storm that arrived from the northeast before the pontoons were securely anchored.
Friday, October 09, 2026
Saturday, October 03, 2026
Saturday, September 26, 2026
after 13 years of entertaining us with upgrading the engineering and design of, while building an Austin Mini, Nik and Richard have gotten Project Binky out of the shed and onto the blacktop for shakedown runs! And of course, found that many things needed to be fixed
Started in 2013, this has been one of the most entertaining series on You Tube for gear heads, I learned of it and posted about it in 2018, with a follow up in 2020 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=binky
https://www.youtube.com/@BadObsessionMotorsport/videos for all the Binky build videos
Thursday, September 10, 2026
the UK hates, and has outlawed, bikes that can go faster than 15 mph... so this highly modified one really pissed them off when they caught it going 30 mph (and not paying for vehicle registration and insurance)
the bike had a scooter motor roughly wired to a battery held on by tape. The rear wheel had also been replaced with a smaller solid wheel.
Saturday, August 22, 2026
Monday, August 17, 2026
Norman Harvey's in Cardiff, which had a lioness on the garage forecourt, for a little while. He brought a 4 month old lioness to the garage in 1968 until it was too powerful to be handled. (Thank you Paul!)
then he rehomed it with a safari park
I bet a LOT of people came by just to see the lion!
Monday, August 10, 2026
the rich people around London are pushing for more scrutiny from London Metro Police to bust hooligans... and a Dubai-registered Ferrari Monza SP2, (1 of 499 made, worth 4M), was confiscated because it was uninsured and the driver wasn't properly licsensed
Friday, June 19, 2026
Tuesday, June 09, 2026
The preservation of steam locomotives in Britain was largely due to a scrap yards decision to prioritize scrapping the railcars first... 213 locomotives were saved from scrapping at just one yard, Barry in South Wales (thank you Paul!)
At the end of steam in the 1960s, Dai Woodham bought hundreds of withdrawn steam engines from British railways for his scrap business at Barry Island. He intended to scrap them but delayed doing so while he focused on scrapping redundant railway wagons.
As a result, railway preservation societies flocked to Barry to select locomotives to restore to operate their lines. Out of almost 300 engines sent to Barry, almost three quarters were rescued from the graveyard, and over half lived to steam again.
The single act of not scrapping these engines helped create the Heritage Railway movement that exists in the UK today.
Saturday, May 23, 2026
A pony was rescued after becoming trapped inside a big tractor tire... no one saw it get itself stuck, it might have laid down inside for the shade, but it needed help from rescue workers to get out
Rescue workers carefully lifted the tire and freed him gradually, easing out his legs, shoulder and neck in stages to avoid injury.
It ain't pretty, so I'm not posting the photo.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Steve Green, along with his decrepit-looking VW campervan, Cecil, are on a mission to rid the beautiful creeks of Cornwall rivers of 166 abandoned fiberglass yachts
the legacy of the mass-produced fibreglass pleasure boat boom is unfolding.
Yachts bought in the 1960s and 1970s are now reaching the end of their useful lives and end up in landfills, but because disposal is charged by the ton, many of them are abandoned by their owners, who don’t want to foot the cost (between 1 and 4k) or take responsibility for disposing of them. (in San Diego they were anchored out in the bay, and then sunk)
Steve relies on small charitable grants, crowdfunding and enthusiastic volunteers willing to paddle kayaks out to wrecks and help. Green ran up £8,000 on credit cards last year when the grants didn’t cover all the decaying boats he took to the dump.
Green is keen for Britain to follow the French model, in which boat manufacturers have to pay an eco-contribution for every boat sold. This is combined with an annual tax on boat owners – who are easy to track down because boats have to be licensed – and used to fund 35 free-to-use boat scrapping centers across France.
Green is keen for Britain to follow the French model, in which boat manufacturers have to pay an eco-contribution for every boat sold. This is combined with an annual tax on boat owners – who are easy to track down because boats have to be licensed – and used to fund 35 free-to-use boat scrapping centers across France.
The Association pour la Plaisance Eco-Responsable, which runs these centers, has removed more than 16,000 boats since it was launched in 2019
Thursday, February 05, 2026
A 13-year-old boy who drove his family’s Volkswagen (underage and without a license) in the middle of the night for a joyride, was given six penalty points on his driving license which he will not be eligible to receive for another two years
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was spotted by other motorists driving the 2.5-litre silver van on the A35, a busy dual carriageway in Poole.
When asked by the district judge, the boy admitted it was not the first time he had taken the vehicle.
imagine what car insurance will cost him? I bet he continues to drive illegally, without insurance.
a UK ban on asylum seekers using taxis to attend medical appointments has come into force.
The government changed the policy after a BBC investigation which showed people travelling long distances at high cost.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: "I have ended the wasteful use of taxis for medical appointments to protect the taxpayer's purse.
"I will stop at nothing to remove the incentives that draw illegal migrants to Britain, to restore order and control to our borders."
It was revealed in November that an average of £15.8m had been spent a year on taxis for asylum seekers.
In one case, an asylum seeker said he went on a 250-mile cab journey to a GP, costing the Home Office £600.
The ban will not stop the use of taxis completely and there will be some exemptions for people with physical disabilities, chronic illnesses and pregnancy-related needs.
"I will stop at nothing to remove the incentives that draw illegal migrants to Britain, to restore order and control to our borders."
It was revealed in November that an average of £15.8m had been spent a year on taxis for asylum seekers.
This is the follow up to https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2025/11/im-going-to-sum-up-couple-of-stories.html
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Trainspotting, 1942 til about 1990. Young UK boys hung around railroads and train stations, notebooks in hand
Trainspotting began in 1942 when Mr Allan was a 19-year-old trainee in the public-relations office of the Southern Railway at Waterloo. Tired of replying to letters from railway enthusiasts demanding details of locomotives, he suggested that the office produce a simple booklet listing their vital statistics.
His boss was not interested, so Mr Allan decided to do it himself.
The ABC of Southern Locomotives was a simple pocket- sized index of engine numbers and types. At a shilling each, 2,000 copies sold out immediately. ABC guides to other railway companies soon followed.
Partly in order to teach safety to young spotters, Mr Allan started the Loco- spotters Club.
By the late Forties it had a quarter of a million members. In the Fifties and Sixties a million ABC guides, listing 20,000 locomotives, were being sold every year.
The ABC of Southern Locomotives was a simple pocket- sized index of engine numbers and types. At a shilling each, 2,000 copies sold out immediately. ABC guides to other railway companies soon followed.
Partly in order to teach safety to young spotters, Mr Allan started the Loco- spotters Club.
By the late Forties it had a quarter of a million members. In the Fifties and Sixties a million ABC guides, listing 20,000 locomotives, were being sold every year.
Sunday, January 04, 2026
Tuesday, December 30, 2025
a meteorite the size of a Christmas turkey broke up over a small village 60 years ago, the largest meteorite to hit the UK, was on Christmas Eve 1965. A kid found a 3 pound piece of it, and sold it to buy a 10-speed Raleigh racing bike
When a meteorite the size of a Christmas turkey broke up over a small British village 60 years ago, David Radford was a teenager who had a second-hand bike.
This changed after he found a fragment of the meteorite when he was playing with friends at a park. His foot fell down a hole, and he found the 4.5 billion-year-old piece of space rock.
A week later, there was a knock at David's front door. The late British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, and an official from one of the museums in London
After the two visitors confirmed it was a meteorite, the museum official asked if they could buy it from him.
He said he was given 530 dollars when adjusted for inflation, as the going rate was a dollar per ounce of meteorite.
"I was wanting a new bicycle, and I'd got the family hand-me-down, so I wanted to replace that," David said.
He bought a 10-speed Raleigh racing bike, but said his mother made him set up a bank account with the remaining money.
After the two visitors confirmed it was a meteorite, the museum official asked if they could buy it from him.
He said he was given 530 dollars when adjusted for inflation, as the going rate was a dollar per ounce of meteorite.
"I was wanting a new bicycle, and I'd got the family hand-me-down, so I wanted to replace that," David said.
He bought a 10-speed Raleigh racing bike, but said his mother made him set up a bank account with the remaining money.
Saturday, December 13, 2025
1921 Tamplin, a distinctive, tandem two-seater British automobile, notable for its narrow wheels, distinctive cycle-car design
The car was powered by a 980 cc JAP V-twin, air-cooled engine mounted on the side of the body and coupled by chain drive to a Sturmey-Archer three-speed-and-reverse gearbox and then by an exposed belt to the rear wheels.
To avoid the need for a differential drive was to the left side rear wheel.
The engine was started by a kick starter from the driver’s seat.
The clutch pedal, when fully depressed operated the brakes.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=25183178851291757&set=pcb.25183185961291046
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